26 Things Successful People Do To Increase Their Productivity at Work

It seems like more and more companies are adopting the motto “do more with less”.

So where does that leave you?

Scrambling to complete deadlines, wearing 18 different hats, answering the slew of emails and phone calls… you get the point.

The goal of this post is to help you find ways for you and your team to increase productivity at work. Instead of trying to do a bunch of these at once, find a couple that you can implement for at least 21 days (the time it typically takes to form a new habit).

Free bonus:Download this entire list as a PDF. Easily save it on your computer for quick reference or print it and keep at your desk. Includes 5 bonus ideas not found in this post.

1. List your “crucial results” for the day

Crucial results are a list of objectives that absolutely need to be accomplished during your day to move your projects and goals forward. Create a spreadsheet listing your top 3 crucials for each day. This will help you plan each day and make sure you’re maintaining focus on the most important tasks each day.

2. Use tools to make your life easier and help you work more efficiently

There’s a lot of technology being developed to help you organize your life, use your time effectively, and make your life easier. Here’s a couple to try out that can help you increase your productivity at work:

Time Doctor’s time tracking software helps teams be more productive. By running in the background on your team’s computer, you’ll be able to see high level and granular reports about how your team spends their day. You’ll see which apps and websites they use while working. When team members begin to spend too much time on black listed sites, Time Doctor gives them a friendly reminder to get back on track.

Boomerang is an app that works with your Gmail to help you take control of your inbox. The main feature of this tool is the ability to schedule the exact date and time to send out an email. You can also “boomerang” an email to come back to the top of your inbox if you don’t get a response within a specific time frame after sending a message.

Have you ever wondered exactly how much time you’re spending on important vs. non-important things throughout your day? RescueTime is the answer. It runs in the background of your computer and mobile devices to track the amount of time you spend on applications and websites. At the end of the week (or whatever time-frame you prefer) you receive a detailed report that breaks down where you’ve been spending your time.

Evernote is a digital notepad. It syncs with the cloud so that you can access your notes from your computer or mobile app. You can also save pictures and voice-recorded messages as notes.

15Five is a tool that allows you to easily get feedback from the people you manage. You create a list of questions that takes members of your team about 15 minutes to complete each week and takes managers about 5 minutes to review and provide feedback (hence the name). We use it at our company and we’ve found it to be a great way to get weekly engagement between team members and their direct reports.

If you haven’t heard of StayFocusd, you’re probably still getting lost down rabbit holes on the internet. It’s an extension that lets you limit access to the websites that you use to distract yourself, keeping you dialed in for important tasks.

Todoist is exactly what it sounds like and so much more, a to-do list chrome extension that’s packed with helpful features like setting deadlines, recurring project reminders and easy labeling to keep you organized.

The food we eat is extremely important in boosting our brainpower and impacting how productive we are at work.

Imagine you eat a Snickers bar versus a fruit and nut bar – which do you think is going to give you the energy necessary to finish strong through the afternoon? Junk food not only affects your weight. It also causes decreased productivity and energy crashes.

Here’s SnackNation CEO Sean Kelly breaking down some quick ways you can turn a healthy snack into a meal:

4. Complete tasks in batches

Tim Ferris, author of the international best seller The 4 Hour Work Week, is extremely good at finding ways to be more efficient in everything from work to cooking to bodybuilding.

One of my favorite insights from his book is how much more efficient it is to batch your activities instead of breaking them up into small chunks.

The logic behind this is that it takes time for you to get into a rhythm with whatever you’re working on. If you constantly start and stop that process, you’re wasting time getting back into your rhythm or catching up to where you left off.

How can you use this in your day-to-day life to improve productivity at work?

Instead of spreading out data entry and reporting tasks throughout the week, set a block of time to knock it all out at once

Set meetings with colleagues back to back in the afternoon

Use the “2-Minute Rule” to knock out small tasks and beat procrastination

5. Conquer procrastination with the “2-Minute Rule”

The “2-Minute Rule” seems simple enough, but it’s a tactic that works to perpetuate a system of productivity.

Often interpreted as completing any task you think of that should take 2 minutes or less right away, the 2-minute rule can kill productivity if you take it at face value and don’t carefully implement it.

To use the 2-minute rule successfully, you should schedule time to get your to-do list for the day in order. While building this list, you should find that there are some small tasks that seem like they can be done in a couple of minutes. Do them!

Always make sure to come back to your list and finish it, though. Don’t get bogged down in these small tasks and let them derail your day by taking up more time than they should.

6. Get moving!

Exercise is not only important for the body, it is almost as important for your mental wellbeing. According to this article from Brain HQ, exercising has been shown to reduce stress hormones while also increasing growth factors in the brain necessary for new neuronal connections.

I’ve personally switched back and forth between exercising in the morning versus at night and I typically find that it works better for me earlier in the day. The motivation to go to the gym after a really long day is hard to find. However, the important thing is that you are consistent with your exercise.

7. Morning huddles with your team

This point made the list of employee wellness ideas for offices, but it’s also worth mentioning again here. Each morning, huddle together with your team for about 15 minutes and go over each person’s main crucial results for the day. This helps everyone get on the same page and lets people know where their assistance is needed.

And if you’re finding it difficult to dedicate the time to this, sit down with individual members of your team to go over lessons from the previous week and set expectations and goals for the week on Monday.

Here at SnackNation we call them DR’s. Each of our managers meets with their team members to strategize how to best accomplish their goals.

8. Prioritize your most important tasks first

Stephen Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, there’s a chapter dedicated to a subject he calls putting “first things first”. There’s a great analogy of this concept using rocks and a bucket. Here’s a video that illustrates this concept from the book:

9. Put your phone on silent

Corresponding through social media, text messages, making phone calls and emailing, ranks as the 4th biggest workplace distraction behind food and bathroom breaks, and talking with coworkers.

Have you ever been in state of flow where you’re completely focused on the task at hand when your phone beeps or buzzes and gets you sidetracked? I think we’ve all experienced that.

Remove the distractions by silencing your phone, exiting out of chat applications and closing the inbox before you start any important task where complete focus is necessary.

10. Is that meeting really necessary?

Have you ever walked out of a business meeting and realized that it was a complete waste of time? You’d be lying if you said no. HR consultant Sharlyn Lauby of HR Bartender agrees:

“One of the biggest obstacles to productivity is business meetings. That being said, I do not think the answer is to abolish meetings or create funky rules like ‘no meeting Wednesdays’ or ‘only 10 minute meetings’. Organizations need to give employees the tools to run effective and productive meetings.”

So how can you do that? Make sure there is a set agenda and goal for each meeting.

No agenda and goal, no meeting. Also respect participants’ time! A one-hour meeting should only take one hour. If you end early, that’s cool. But don’t run late.

For more ideas on how to have more efficient and impactful meetings, check out this infographic from our friends at Taskworld.

Follow this simple flow chart to determine if you’re ready to schedule a meeting or just wasting time:

11. Get out of the office

Working remotely can help you increase your productivity by getting more done in less time.

While the office is an environment that can foster collective energy and resources, it can also hinder our productivity. People often interrupt others who are in the middle of work because they think their issue or question is urgent.

In reality, their issue is typically not urgent and can wait.

This study by the Harvard Business Review found that employees who worked from home were more productive AND less likely to quit their jobs.

13. Visualize next week this week with the “2-Hour Solution”

The “2-Hour Solution” was created by Roger Seip, author of Train Your Brain for Success.

It’s a method of spending 2 hours each week for the purpose of mentally creating the next week of your life. Roger swears by this method and claims that when he does this, his life goes well.

Use this time each week to reconnect with your goals, assess what has been working and what has not, and schedule your calendar for the upcoming week.

How does this differ from normal scheduling?

You schedule your “green time” (the work that gets you paid), “red time” (the time that supports your green time), “flex time” (unblocked time to prevent the unplanned from unraveling your plans), and “re-creation time” (the time to take care of yourself – i.e. hobbies, exercise, relaxing, etc). Most of the time you’ll find that you don’t even need the full 2 hours to make this effective.

14. Wake up early

Look at every top CEO, executive or leader and you’ll find they all have 1 major thing in common – they wake up early. How can waking up at 6am or earlier make you more productive at work?

It gives you the time you need to start your day right. Instead of feeling rushed out of the door each morning, you’ll have more quiet time to do things you would otherwise be too distracted to do.

You can read each morning, eat a healthy breakfast, or exercise before hitting your stride to start the day. I started doing this about a year ago and it has increased my productivity dramatically.

I typically find that I hit my most productive groove about 2 hrs after waking up. So now I get to read something inspiring or surf at dawn before most people even start their day. Then when I get to work, I’m ready to hit the ground running.

15. Stand more

Feeling a little sleepy around 3pm? Stand up! Is your posture starting to wane? Stand up! Do you notice that your team is having trouble staying focused in meetings? Stand up!

It’s simple, but it’s effective. At SnackNation our team members swear by their standing desks and the documented impact they have on productivity.

While standing at your desk doesn’t burn a significant amount of calories more than sitting, it can help diminish other health risks, like:

16. Learn to say no

Throughout your day, people will inevitably disrupt you to get your help or input on something. It’s so easy to say yes and take on more things, but this is counterproductive. Learn to say no more often to guard your time for your highest leverage activities.

Saying “no” to something is easier said than done, but there are ways to achieve to that end without coming across as combative or crass.

When someone comes to you with a request that you need to say no to, simply ask them to give you 15 minutes (or some arbitrary interval of time) to finish what you’re working on then by the time you come around to find out what they wanted, they’ll often have figured it out on their own.

17. Eat the frog

At SnackNation, we use 9am-10am as “Crush” time.

During this time, we get our most challenging tasks out of the way and don’t disturb one another with questions. Whichever activity you are dreading the most is probably the one you need to complete first thing in the morning.

Once you get started, you’ll quickly find your flow and get that task out of the way.

18. Focus on one thing at a time

You’ve undoubtedly heard that multitasking is detrimental for productivity at work. Too many people fall victim to the trap of doing several things at once so it bears repeating here to help you increase your productivity.

Multitasking lowers IQ and reduces the performance with which you can complete any task. So would you rather do 3 things with mediocre results or 1 task with excellent results?

19. Delegate like a boss

Do you ever find yourself wondering how you’re possibly going to complete all the work on your plate?

I’m willing to bet there are some low value tasks that you could outsource. Things like data-entry, document formatting or running errands are all going to eat away at the precious time you have during your day to get stuff done.

Luckily there are some great online services that connect you with cheap labor to get tedious tasks done so you can spend your time focusing on the most important projects.

20. Wear headphone

Working in a high collaboration environment can mean that people come up to you with questions all throughout the day, throwing you off of your rhythm.

Wearing headphones is a simple trick that can ward off questions that are either too menial or too complex to be answered in a face-to-face interaction. To disturb someone, at the very least, your colleague will have to have at the very least thought through the question in the moment it takes them to consider whether it’s worth the disturbance.

You don’t even have to be listening to music. Headphones on their own are a deterrent and help filter your communications in real life.

21. Give yourself less time than you think you’ll need

This is another piece of gold from Train Your Brain for Success. However long you think it will take you to complete a project or task, give yourself less time to complete it. You’ll find that giving yourself a deadline will keep you more focused to get the job done.

22. Read in the morning

Most people don’t wake up super energized feeling inspired and excited to take on their day.

One of the best ways I’ve found to get my mindset in the right place to be productive at work is to read for about 15-30 minutes before I start my day.

Books on business, psychology, behavioral economics and personal development are the subjects that I personally find to boost my creativity and inspiration for my day.

23. Protect the time in your schedule to get real work done

We all have those days that fly by as we jump from meeting to meeting. At the end of the day, we come to realize that we didn’t actually get any work done. How can you make sure you’re as productive as possible each day?

“One sure fire way to improve your work productivity is to make sure you protect enough time in your schedule, in other words, time that is not in meetings, conference calls, or any other activity that is not conducive to thinking, planning, and creating. Lots of us will book back-to-back-to-back meetings in a day, then all of a sudden it’s 6:00PM and we feel like we did not accomplish much at all. So protect your time, keep your most productive times meeting-free if you can, and even consider designating one afternoon, or even an entire day if you can, as a ‘meeting-free’ zone where you can dig in, concentrate, and get some ‘real’ work done.”

25. Treat yourself to motivate yourself

While most of us may do this naturally, it’s a very effective way of managing your habits and productivity.

When you incorporate rewards into your productivity system it helps train your brain to focus on goal-oriented tasks by tapping into your emotions. The reward you give yourself after completing something on your to-do list makes you feel good.

Simply put, people who are happy or feel good are more productive than those that don’t.

26. Replicate the body’s natural cycle

“Replicating the body’s natural cycle in office environments is a fundamental, but often ignored, part of improving wellbeing. So, is the lighting full spectrum? Do you keep blinds and windows open to ensure there’s natural light and air circulating? Plants are another well-researched way to improve air quality and mood – they kill two birds with one stone.”

Barron Rosborough is a seasoned content marketer and writer from Los Angeles, CA. He writes on topics ranging from wellness to leadership (and everything in between). He is currently the Digital Marketing Coordinator at SnackNation, a curated healthy snack subscription service for offices and homes.

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21 Comments

However, what I liked the most is the tip #21. If you asked me what are the most common mistake people make when it comes to productivity, focusing on being busy would be in the top of my list. Unfortunately, some people misunderstood what personal productivity is all about.

They think it’s about working more and being able to get “more” things done. But, it’s never about “more” done. What is common between all successful people is that they know what’s need to be done and what’s more important. They focus on the tasks that bring more value to their work and get them closer to their goals. Knowing what’s “more important” is the key to effective productivity and , ultimately, life success.

To riff on 10, “Work remotely,” the idea of placing work on platforms and using them as work hubs as opposed to blending work and leisure and life and bills, etc, has improved my own efficiency, as well as my team’s.

Reading morning surely helps me a lot. It helps me remember better. The other one which is found useful is saying NO, priorities are a big part of our life and saying NO brings in lot of change. Thanks for other tips 🙂

This is a great post.
Can’t agree more with prioritizing our work.
Every morning I will schedule my time for my most important work that will give me the most result toward my goals. I time-block the task and I find this very effective and productive.

I love your list, it’s useful, friendly, clear and everyone may find something for them. The only thing I don’t agree with is the 26th point. Personally, instead of reading it every morning, I prefer to end my day at work with it, by looking at all the tasks I’ve put into ‘done’ column (I mean https://pl.pinterest.com/pin/517491813403216960/ ) and reminding myself, why I’ve done them, what was the main aim, what was the purpose. And these purposes somehow create my ID statement 😉 And then comes the point 22nd… 😉

Awesome list. Would like to add ProofHub in this list. ProofHub brings a blend of amazing productivity features that teams can use to run their day, their projects and their work-life. Tasks, Online discussions, Group chat, Reports, Gantt Charts, Proofing tool, Calendar, Timer, Timesheets, Quickies and what not; everything you need to bring teams together, collaborate and get projects delivered on time is available within this single tool.

Great article! I agree. I noticed that most of us try to be productive by cramming when we can simply increase productivity by having a clear plan and be able to identify if the other party is here to engage and not to just for an intellectual exchange.

Indeed a great share. I often face difficulties while working because I always get distracted from the work either by using my mobile phone or getting busy with social media posts.

And by doing all such distracting activities, I always wastes a lot of time and all my important work remains pending. That’s why now I’m thinking to prioritize the most important work to do in the morning before any distraction.

It might help me complete at least the most important task on daily basis and later I can do anything I want. But It’s really important to prioritize the work and increase the productivity.

To be honest, #25 is what keeps me productive/motivated the most. I know it’s weird but I’ve created my own rewarding system based on a tier list of how I performed on a certain task. Each tier represents a fixed sum of money I save for leisure on weekends. It’s odd as hell but It keeps me going well.

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SnackNation is a healthy office snack delivery service that makes healthy snacking fun, life more productive, and workplaces awesome. We provide a monthly, curated selection of healthy snacks from the hottest, most innovative natural food brands in the industry, giving our members a hassle-free experience and delivering joy to their offices.